Holder's answers on AP records evasive

Attorney General Eric Holder has provided only weak, evasive, unconvincing responses to questions about the government's secret acquisition of Associated Press phone records.

His rationale that national security would have been jeopardized by alerting and negotiating with AP before obtaining the subpoena for two months of records - a standard practice in such sensitive situations - is simply not supported by the available facts. The Justice Department supposedly was trying to determine the leak behind a May 7, 2012, story about how the CIA disrupted a bomb plot by an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. Not only did the story in question run after the foiled bomb plot, but the AP had held the piece until after Obama administration officials said their security concerns were allayed to the point that the government was ready to make the announcement the very next day.

Holder lamely said he recused himself because he was among the possessors of the leaked information. But it is inexplicable, if not outright reckless, that the attorney general would delegate the decision to a deputy without emphasizing that it must adhere to the Justice Department's guidelines that demanded great restraint on such media subpoenas.

The aftershocks of this unprecedented records grab - involving logs on 20 phone lines used by 100 journalists over two months - could have a chilling effect on the willingness of potential sources and hence the ability of the news media to serve its role as government watchdog.

"There has long been a 'social contract' between the press and the government so that in sensitive situations we both do what is best for our nation," Eve Burton, general counsel for the Hearst Corp., told Holder in a letter requesting a meeting with a small group of media general counsels. The Justice Department's actions in the AP case "harmed not only the national media's trust in your policies but also the general public's faith in this administration," she added.

The question for President Obama is whether he can maintain trust and faith in an attorney general whose actions and words fail to vigorously defend this administration's stated commitment to transparency and the First Amendment.